just another film blog

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Hillbillies have long been enemies of randy teenagers that want to spend a weekend in the woods. They hunt each member, preferably the black people and the slut first. They delight in kills that favor heavy machinery and sometimes they even capture the one that is most pure of heart. So what if the hillbillies that are seen as killers by the kids are actually innocent?

Tucker and Dale accomplished something big in their lives. They acquired a vacation house near a lake and in the middle of the woods. Sure it needs some fixing up and there are bones and articles about killing sprees scattered around the house, but that just lends to its charm. Meanwhile a group of shits (college kids, as is the trope) decide to do dipshit things like go skinny dipping at night. One clumsy yet beautiful woman falls off of a cliff and knocks her head just before landing in the lake. Fearing that she will drown, Dale jumps in to rescue her but the college kids observing the actions from afar actually think that they are just trying to capture her. This misunderstanding leads to other ones and the college kids figure these two men are serial killers to the extreme.

Satires of the teen slasher flick flood the market in the horror division. No longer can you just have a teen slasher film, they have to be aware of themselves to the determinate of the horror genre in general. Each character has to embody a stereotype and fight to break it, each story involves massive amounts of misunderstandings and almosts and there are tons of references to much better films. They are all mostly forgettable in every aspect. All of this being said, I think this film is the best a satire subgenre can be. Although the story is predictable, the college kids wooden, and there is an insane amount of gore, this film is watchable because of the two leads. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine play the two hillbillies with such sincerity it is hard not to love their characters. They are just two good, earnest best friends. They make a rather cute couple.

The problems that I came into while trying to enjoy this film was the “villain” of the piece. A bratty frat boy with a penchant for tomahawks, the actor seems to never commit to either the fratty part of his character nor the bat shit insane part of his character. There was so much potential in that character that is wasted by the performance. But his performance was not the only one that made me cringe from time to time. Each college kid that was not the young beautiful blonde (played by someone who would be familiar if you watch 30 Rock) was completely loathsome when they were on-screen. This was probably intentional, but the actors that are in these roles seem like Scary Movie rejects. Thank god they were only on-screen for a short while before they met their gory fate.

Despite my reservations about some aspects of the film, I still enjoyed watching it for the most part. If you are looking of an hour and half distraction you can’t go wrong with it, but if you are looking for something transformational, look elsewhere.